A liquid crystal display has attracted attention for its properties such as being thin, being lightweight, and having low power consumption, and is widely used in portable devices such as a cellular phone and a watch; office automation (OA) devices such as a personal computer monitor and a notebook-size personal computer; and home appliances such as a video camera and a liquid crystal television. This is because disadvantages in that its display properties change depending on an angle from which a display is viewed and that the liquid crystal display cannot operate at high temperatures and very low temperatures have been overcome by technical innovations. However, wide-ranging uses have required different properties in accordance with the uses. For example, in a conventional liquid crystal display, as a viewing angle property, it has been considered sufficient that a contrast ratio between white/black displays may be about 10 in an oblique direction. This definition derives from a contrast ratio of black ink printed on white paper of newspapers, magazines, and the like. However, use for a large stationary television requires a display that can be viewed well from different viewing angles because several people view a display at the same time. Since light leak in black display invites rapid decrease in contrast ratio in a liquid crystal display, it is important to reduce light leak in all azimuth directions. Moreover, since weak color in the black display disturbs sharpness at color display, it is also important to make background color pure black. In use for a large color television, persons viewing the display feel unpleasant sensation and feeling of fatigue without improvement such technical problems.
In liquid crystal displays, various retardation films have hitherto been used. For example, there has been disclosed a liquid crystal display wherein a retardation film whose optical indicatrix has a relationship of nx>nz>ny is arranged on one side of an in-plane switching (IPS) mode liquid crystal cell to improve a contrast ratio in an oblique direction (see, e.g., JP-A-11-305217). However; a conventional liquid crystal display has problems such as large change in coloring (also referred to as large color shift) of images depending on a viewing angle when a display displaying a black image is viewed from an oblique direction. The display properties of such liquid crystal displays do not satisfy the level required for large color television use.